The Aspen Account

by Bryan Devore

  He walked across the marble floor of the corporate entrance. The security guard, caught dozing, stiffened in his chair and returned his nod. Feeling tired and alone, he crossed the floor to the elevators and pressed the button, and as he waited, his eyes fell on The Oath of the Horatii. He studied the scene in the painting as if he had never seen it before. Though he had bought it to impart a feeling of dominance and courage to his employees, he now suspected that the artist may have had a darker theme in mind. Perhaps he wasn’t celebrating the soldiers’ courage at all. Even though they were willing to die for Rome, perhaps the focus was really on the weeping women in the background. Perhaps the artist was himself weeping for the fall of the Roman Empire, for the loss of one of history’s greatest societies.

  “I’ve always thought this a remarkable painting,” said a deep voice beside him.

  Startled, he turned his head away from the painting to find Jerry Diamond standing next to him.

  “Truly remarkable,” Diamond continued. “Have I ever told you that?”

  “No,” Seaton replied.

  “Well, it is. The courage of the soldiers to fight whatever enemy they encounter. And they’re so young, too. The courage of youth can be impressive, don’t you think?”

  “There are many kinds of courage,” Seaton replied. “Perhaps it’s the father who is the most courageous.”

  “The father?” The CFO gave him a puzzled look.

  “It’s the father who is giving the swords to his sons, even when he knows he may be sending them to their death. You see, the soldiers are courageous because of their ignorance—they’re too young to really understand how big a sacrifice they may be making. It’s the father who can see the big picture, who truly knows how much they are about to lose. But the women are the ones who weep. You see that. The father stands in front of his sons without shedding a tear, even though he’s crying on the inside because he knows he is about to lose them. Now, that’s courage, Jerry: to lose your sons because of their actions and not shed a tear.”

  The elevator chimed behind them, and Diamond turned and moved toward the opening doors, but Seaton lingered a second, his sad eyes gazing at the Roman scene captured by a long-dead artist. He suddenly regretted buying the painting. It was too beautiful to be imprisoned inside a corporate lobby. Every day it seemed that life was draining from X-Tronic. For too long the grand entry had been a mask for the fading glory of a stronger, more vital past. As the elevator doors closed on the poignant scene, he made a mental note to donate the painting back to the Louvre, where it deserved to be—back out in the world, surrounded by the nobler elements of humankind, far away from the coming events at X-Tronic.

  Lance felt more alive now than at any time he could remember. The board of directors meeting was in fifteen minutes. Waiting in his office for Lucas, he thought of how he had rehearsed this meeting in his mind until no possible variation of events or discussion could surprise him—nothing, that is, until he saw the hangdog look on his brother’s face as he walked in.

  “Well, guess this is the big day, huh?” Lucas said in a less-than-convincing tone.

  “Yup,” Lance replied, hiding his concern, “this is it . . . Say, you ready for this?”

  But Lucas seemed unable to meet his gaze. And for the first time in nearly a year, he realized there was something wrong with Lucas: a disturbance so deep that not even his own twin could see the problem. This sudden, mysterious distance between them was troubling, especially now, only minutes before the showdown that, it seemed, he had been preparing for his whole life long.

  “I’m ready for it,” Lucas replied.

  “You sure? You don’t seem all that amped.”

  “Just a little nervous.” Lucas was looking out the far window. “What if things don’t go the way we expect?”

  “What’s wrong, bro?”

  Lucas looked at him but said nothing.

  “C’mon, what’s going on?” Lance insisted. “We’re about to walk into the most important meeting of our lives, something we’ve spent years working for. What are you not telling me?”

  Lucas turned from the window and faced him without a word.

  Lance stood and, moving around the desk with remarkable speed, grabbed Lucas’s shoulders and forced him to look him in the eyes. “Brother,” he said, trying to sound calm, “what are you not telling me?”

  Lucas looked at him with apologetic eyes. “Nothing,” he finally said. “I just wonder if there isn’t another way to do this.”

  “Another way?”

  “A way that doesn’t hurt Dad.”

  “What are you talking about!” Lance asked, gaping. “There is no other way. Why would you even think this? Don’t do this to us. Everything is set up. Don’t betray me.”

  These last words seemed to bring Lucas out of his fugue, for he seemed once again aware of the world around him. Straightening the slumped shoulders and filling his chest, he said, “Sorry. It was just a thought. I don’t know why I said that.”

  Lance stepped back, unable to shake the feeling that his brother just might be a lot less like him than he had always thought. But they were still together on what they were doing. They might have different reasons for the choices they made in life, but in the end, they were still the same choices.

  “Jesus, Luke,” he said with a disarming grin. “For a moment there I wasn’t sure who you were.”

  “It’s still me,” Lucas replied. “That was stupid what I said. I’m ready for this.”

  “Okay, then. No more pussyfooting around. This is where we reveal our intentions. This is where he realizes he’s lost his company and that we’re every bit as strong as he was when he was young.”

  “He can’t blame us for doing what he once did.”

  “He won’t blame us. That’s not his style. He’ll blame himself.” Lance said. Then, for Lucas’s sake, he added, “After the shock wears off, he’ll be impressed that we did this.”

  Lucas smiled at this, and Lance knew that his drifting brother had found his rudder and was back on course. He looked at his watch, saw it was time to head to the boardroom, and pointed at his office door.

  As he and his brother walked down the palatial hallway in their Savile Row bespoke suits, Lance felt himself almost bubbling over with excitement. They were only moments away from beating their father at his own game, taking power away from the man who had made billions taking power from others. It served him right for betraying his business partners, for failing to save their mother in that tragic climbing accident, for abandoning his sons to a childhood of boarding schools and hazing and headmasters so he could continue chasing power and money while his sons grew up as orphans. And now, after all these years of solitary success, dear old absentee, eyes-on-the-prize Dad was finally going to lose the thing he cherished most in all the world: his real baby, X-Tronic.

  30

  WALKING INTO THE dark boardroom, Don Seaton found ten people waiting for him. They all stood up around the massive wood roundtable that he had chosen thirty years ago because it reminded him of his childhood romance with Arthur and his knights. He nodded at the men in waiting and approached his designated chair. Lance and Lucas were seated opposite him. Jerry Diamond sat two places to Seaton’s right, his shaved head wearing a diadem of half-reflected small cone lights in the ceiling. The other seven men who sat around the table were X-Tronic’s outside directors, who, along with the elder Seaton, made up the board of directors. On the table in front of each place lay a copy of the summary packet for the meeting’s agenda.

  Seaton wondered whether he might be losing his zeal for leading his company through the brawling, eye-gouging chaos of the corporate world. He thought of how far he and X-Tronic had traveled together across time since he took the helm twenty-five years ago. Looking around the table at the faces of the current board members and select officers, he thought of the vanished faces of those who had sat with him at this very table in the beginning. Nick Kemper, the enfant terrible astounding the ear
ly board members with his eccentric brilliance, now sifting through New York’s seamier bars looking for young bands he could develop into real talent. And the young and energetic Jack Ross, who had made up for his ignorance of software programming and computer engineering by demonstrating one of the most brilliant business minds Seaton had ever known, now lying in a steel drawer tucked into a wall of the Milton Helpen Institute of Forensic Medicine, under the care of New York’s chief medical examiner.

  Seaton forced himself to let these thoughts go, for they would only depress him more, weakening the very instincts that had kept him focused and strong as he survived one threat after another over the years. He knew now what his sons must be planning, though he couldn’t see how they planned to get away with it. He feared he had been given only the barest glimpse of the depth of their planning and maneuvering over the years. They were threatening him from the darkness of his own past, like demons rising from the graves of all the souls he had let down or betrayed in his life. No, it wasn’t so much his sons he must face, as the darkest deeds of his own past.

  He looked across the table at Lance, then Lucas, holding the eyes of each for a few seconds before turning his attention to Paul Kirkland, a skinny man who looked more like a farmer than a board-appointed secretary. “Shall we begin,” Seaton said. “Paul, is everyone accounted for?”

  “Everyone’s here,” Kirkland replied, nodding around the table. “Everyone’s ready.”

  Seaton closed his eyes and took a second to collect himself. Though he had lost his sons’ faith, he still believed he could control the board, believed they would once again choose to follow his vision for the company’s future.

  Opening his eyes, he took a centering breath and sat up straight. “If history has taught us anything, it’s that empires rise and fall.” He paused. “As do corporations.”

  The others in the room remained silent, watching him with a mixture of puzzlement and curiosity, guessing at where he was trying to take the first discussion of the meeting.

  Seaton continued. “Rome destroyed itself internally, over a period of years, before it eventually fell to barbarians from outside. The fundamentals on which it had built its society had dissolved under the weight of its success as those with power were corrupted and failed to honor the work and morals of those who had built the society before them. And as with Rome during the start of its decline, I fear that the fundamentals that made X-Tronic great have been disappearing even as our company is growing.”

  Having said enough to begin his first point, Seaton paused to survey the room for individual reactions. He saw Paul Kirkland look at William Steel, the chairman of the board, whose tan, pockmarked face was frowning. Lucas seemed to shift uncomfortably in his chair before settling into an aggressive breathing rhythm, like an adrenaline-charged fighter before a bout. Lance seemed perfectly relaxed, even grinning when he flashed a glance at Jerry Diamond, who, to Seaton’s sudden dismay, was staring at the center of the table with gleaming eyes, one hand over his mouth in an unmistakable attempt to hide a smile. And for the first time, the terrifying idea occurred to Seaton that his CFO could be in league with the twins. But before he could follow the thought to its possible implications, Lance cleared his throat to speak.

  “Your concerns are unfounded and misconstrued, Father.”

  “It’s ‘Mr. Seaton’ in this room.” He had snapped the words a little more sharply than intended as his frustrated mind still raced to work through the serious damage the twins may have done if they had Diamond’s help.

  Lance swallowed. “Mr. Seaton,” he said stiffly, “X-Tronic has not fallen, and it never will fall. The stock price is at an all-time high, we’re on the verge of reporting record profits that will beat every analyst’s estimates, and even one of our top competitors is now groveling at our front steps, begging us to approve an acquisition bid. X-Tronic is as strong as it has ever been.”

  Seaton interrupted Lance with a quote he had memorized long ago. “‘Many shall be restored that now are fallen, and many shall fall that now are in honor.’ Horace said that, and Benjamin Graham felt it was so important that he reminded the world of it. Everyone at this table needs to take a careful look at why X-Tronic appears to have been doing so well these past two years. I’ll tell you one thing: it hasn’t been because of organic growth. We’ve grown through numerous acquisitions of smaller competitors under the shroud that they served the expansion of X-Tronic. But sometimes acquisitions only mask the lack of growth within the core corporation.”

  “Mr. Seaton,” Jerry Diamond said, “growth through acquisitions is every bit as successful for a corporation as any internal growth could be.”

  “Tell that to Steve Jobs and Apple,” Seaton shot back. “How many years did Microsoft’s stock lag after its initial success with Windows and Office Suite? Meanwhile, Apple grew internally, and its success exploded. Gentlemen, this might be coming as a news flash to you, but X-Tronic has suffered from a serious brain drain over the past few years. We need to refocus our efforts on R and D. Not just a minimally acceptable level of research, either—I want the best programmers and software engineers in the world begging for jobs at X-Tronic. And there are two sides to R and D: the research phase, to make the technological advances; and the development phase, where the new technology is further enhanced to make it a marketable product for consumers. Some of the greatest technological advances in history came through pure research, with no end product in mind. I want research laboratories built on our premises, for pure research only—no strict financial oversight or restraints. I don’t want anything to impede the innovation of our researchers. As they develop the technology, we’ll have a separate team whose primary goal is to further develop that technology into a product we can sell in the marketplace.”

  “You’re talking about an enormous financial investment,” Diamond said.

  “It will be worth it down the road,” Seaton replied.

  “You don’t know that,” Lance said.

  “We have to invest in the future or we’ll die,” Seaton battled back.

  This time Lucas jumped in. “We’re investing in the future by merging with Cygnus.”

  “That’s not an investment,” Seaton said. “That’s joining the enemy out of fear of competing with them.”

  Lucas’s eyes widened. Lance shook his head violently.

  “Now, hold on, Mr. Seaton,” William Steel interrupted from beside him. “I happen to think a merger with Cygnus could be the best way for us to compete in the marketplace.”

  “I disagree,” Seaton said.

  “Wall Street would love it,” Diamond argued.

  “That means it will be good for the shareholders,” Lucas added.

  “Not necessarily,” said Seaton. “There are a dozen reasons why the merger would be a bad idea.”

  “Really,” Lance said, laughing. “Name one.”

  “The cultures are too different,” Seaton said with fire in his voice. “The two companies could never be combined as long as Kavanaugh is Cygnus’s CEO. He’ll shake up the divisional structures and try to control the creative operations in a way that will stamp out any innovation by our development and design teams.”

  “We believe we can control those aspects of the merger,” Lucas said.

  “You can’t possibly control them!” Seaton said, his voice rising from the frustration of having to battle everyone in the room at once. “You can’t control them, because you can’t control Kavanaugh. I’m telling you, if you let him get control of X-Tronic, he will destroy everything that has made this a great corporation. He’ll combine our software products and client relationships into the assembled behemoth that Cygnus has become over the years.”

  Lance, who seemed to have had enough, stood up to speak. “Mr. Steel,” he said, addressing the chairman of the board, “with all due respect to Mr. Seaton, I believe that everyone in this room is well aware of his personal opinion of Mr. Kavanaugh. However, I believe that in the best interest of the
shareholders, it is the board’s responsibility to review the proposed merger by examining the report in front of us.”

  “That is enough!” Seaton growled, getting to his feet. “It’s not a personal opinion but a fact: Kavanaugh destroys companies that merge into his.”

  “With all due respect, sir,” William Steel interjected. “I believe your son has a right to speak here.”

  “His son?” Lance said to Steel. “It’s ‘Mr. Seaton’ in this room.” Lance’s gaze turned toward Seaton.

  Seaton stood, vulnerable and alone, while both his sons looked at him from across the table with the same rebellious strength that he recognized from his own youth. How long had they been positioning themselves in the power struggle for X-Tronic’s leadership? How long had they been planning to confront him at this meeting? And how long ago had Jerry Diamond decided to join them? A lot of backroom dealing had been going on—even Steel’s last comment hinted that the chairman of the board had already decided to side with the twins on the merger. And the horrible realization hit him that he may have lost control of his company long before ever setting foot in this boardroom.

  Slowly Seaton lowered himself back into his seat. The betrayal he felt in this moment squeezed his chest and choked his throat. He closed his dry lips and stared at the table in front of him, willing his right hand to stop shaking. Unable to control the quivering, he pulled his hand back from the tabletop and put it in his lap.

  Now Lucas cleared his throat to speak for the first time. “Look,” he said, “Mr. Seaton is right: companies rise, and they fall. But while focusing on pure research sounds good in theory, we all know there are serious risks to such a strategy. Hundreds of millions of dollars could easily be wasted on haphazard research goals that never materialize into any salable product. I don’t believe that’s a risk X-Tronic should be taking right now. In fact, both Lance and I see the offer from Cygnus as X-Tronic’s best opportunity for continued future success.”